client source opened - sky falling?

Um, yes, I did wonder about all these residents included in this thing.

But then again, I realize I am at their mercy, and simply plan on screeching a lot when something happens to people's content, and hoping they do something about it.

coco

I think that bad is going to happen but I also think that now the ones who get angry about it will get to work on a fix.


If I were knowledged in the area I know I would. Not only to protect myself and my creations but SL as we know it.

My concern with grief-tool builds is not really the grief itself, so much as their being used as an excuse to get bad-stupid people to run an insecure and potentially backdoored client.

While I do appreciate the "so the griefers get ripped off, boo freakin' hoo" sentiment, their losses will go in to the pockets of what we could broadly term "organised crime"; that is, bad-smart people.

I started this thread very much as a devil's-advocate sort of activity - on balance I'm very pleased that the client source is open, as it will gradually open the door to a whole range of inventive stuff (plus bug-fixing and suchlike).

I just wanted to make sure that the whole thing wasn't a total lovefest, and that people noticed that the cost of the incredible coolness to come is a few potential new avenues of risk/stress that weren't really prevalent before.

Does anyone think it to be possible to download inventory to your computer?


If so this ruins the permission system o0

It might be fun for you to try and play around with this and see what you can learn about getting "knowledged" in this area. A few years ago, the only computer language I could competently script/program in was MATLAB (*pukes*), and a little C++.

But because I had lots of stuff on my plate I wanted to learn about I've picked up python, perl, php, C#, java and lisp, not to mention whatever the heck lsl is.

SL alone is responsible for my move into C#.

I don't understand why LL doesn't just scrap the perms system.

I know it's possible to export prim data so you can recreate it in blender or some such program. And it's also possible (with Jeffrey Gomez' tool) to import things back into SL.

So the loop is more or less closed, with some bugs to be worked out yet...

Good question. Perhaps I was a little unclear. I wouldn't call what we were doing "development consultation". Many of us who were involved were not programmers, including me. The SL Views group is simply a focus group that LL bounces ideas off of from time to time. They use us for feedback on their plans, and for suggestions on how to proceed.

It's actually a really smart way of doing business. A lot of companies, from ad agencies to breakfast cereal manufactures to software development firms, are starting to realize these days that there's power in consulting with focus groups created among their own customers. It's not an uncommon practice, and it makes a lot of sense.

Why I in particular was selected to become a member of this particular group, I don't know, but it's been fun.


Not sure where you're getting that from anything I said. Can you please explain?


I can't speak for anyone else. All I can tell you is I myself don't have any add-ons, no. I'm not a programmer. I wouldn't have the first clue how to add anything.


Sorry if anything I said added to the "strangeness". I didn't mean to imply there were any consipracies going on or anything like that. What it boils down to really is what I said earlier, which is this is something LL had always planned to do. As time went on, and they became reasonably confident that they were nearing readiness to go ahead and do it, they decided to let some of us in on their plans so we could give them necessary feedback, perhaps offer points of view they may not have considered yet, and make suggestions. As I said, it was a smart thing to do, and lots of companies do it.



I hear you Chip, as I'm obviously in the same boat as you. This has been a constant concern of mine as well.

I wouldn't be too worried though. People were saying the exact same things about the inetrnet itself 10 years ago. Something to the tune of "OMG! How can we just put our hard-work-created web page out there if anyone can just come along and copy all its contents?!" might ring a few bells if you were present at any corporate strategy meetings on how to utilize this newfangled "internets" thing back in the day. All that concern turned out to be unnecessary, as time demonstrated that it really didn't matter who could copy xyzcompany.com's page content. When the public wants to do business with XYZ Company, they go straight to xyzcompany.com.

I'm not entirely sure how that will translate to what we're doing in SL, but I'm sure that it will translate. I'm not really worried.

You're welcome, Coco, and thanks for the thanks, if that makes sense. I'm glad my ramblings were easily understandable.

Sorry, what do you mean "the loop is..closed"? Are you saying it is almost possible to do that?

Was anyone invited a programmer?

loop is closed: I mean you can export prim data, and then make changes and reimport it.

So building can be done in world, saved to hard drive, modified in another tool, and then reuploaded.

But in short, I do believe that export of prim data right now is completely possible:

link

I'm glad to hear that you were involved in hashing things out with LL, and it's somewhat comforting to know that after taking part in the discussions you're not too worried about it. I'm not going to run around in a panic, but I'll continue doing what I started when GLI reared its ugly head... keep altering my business model to be more service oriented and less dependent on a single sale model. The good thing about expecting the worst is that I'm more likely to end up pleasantly surprised.

I may be optimistic on this, but I think that while there will be an effect, content theft will naturally stabilize at some level. As the scale of theft increases, it should become easier to see, and then directly combat. I'm not trying to justify small-scale theft mind you, but it seems to be one of those things that we have to tolerate due to the cost of fighting it being too large. At the end of the day, a business needs to rely on honest customers who will buy from you instead off the back of a truck anyway. If SLers are generally dishonest folks, you're sunk anyway....

After a quick dive into the code - using a very helpful IDE - the lack of comments, dead code, commented out code, poor modularity, and general convolution is astonishing. It has given me a new appreciation for what the Lindens trying to fix bugs have to contend with.

The programmer who wants to change a small aspect of the client will have to inhale much of the codebase.

I agree with you, Watermelon. Honest folks will always outnumber dishonest ones. The big problem I see with having to be responsible for policing our own content (especially as content becomes easier to steal) is that SL is simply too large for any content creator to police.

Yes, many of them were. Most of what came out of their mouths was way over my head, so I remember little of it. Those of us who don't know how to speak hackerese kind of just sat in our chairs and smiled when those guys spoke. The Lindens all seemed to understand them though, so that was good.



I couldn't have put it better. Change is inevitable. We all have to keep adapting to whatever the current state of the world demands, and if we're observant enough, we can keep ourselves a step or two ahead of any changes.

I have no idea what "open source"means...how will this affect the common player? Will people be running their own servers with their own SL worlds? Could someone please PM me a laymans explanation of how this will change SL for the common, mainland owner, low tier, doesn't want to deal with anyone but LL for land/$L's kind of player?

Thanks
MT

I think this is an easy way to explain, someone correct me if wrong.




On your internet browser go to View>Source. It will show you the building blocks for this web page.

That`s basically what LL has done. They released SL`s source code to the public.

On the one hand people are saying "now someone who knows how can add the things we've always wanted, or fix that bug that's been annoying you forever and that LL won't fix!" and on the other hand it's "if you download and run a non LL-sanctioned viewer then how dumb are you?"

If someone here fixes something that's been annoying me, or adds the one thing I've always wanted, what good is that? How is anyone going to benefit from anything another resident - or group of residents - adds or changes when it means that you're supposed to just trust them and download their viewer, which is the "bad thing" we're getting told not to do?

Related, what is the point of other viewers when they'll break with every grid update? Someone can spend all of today and tomorrow adding something really useful or fixing something annoying and on wednesday it'll all be for nothing because we'll have update day and things are no longer compatible. We can't even wait the 5 hours the grid is down, who's willing to wait days for their favourite third-party viewer to catch up to a new update?

It would make much more sense for LL to find something so that people can extend the existing viewer, the same way you get add-ons for your browser or maybe I'm just missing something really obvious.

Which in turn means that if you're soley going to deal with LL you'll be fine. You'll see new upgrades and bug fixes quicker than usual and nothing will change for you. However on the flip side that means those of us out there that tinker with things will be helping to make your SL even better than before. As now bug fixes and new features are in ANYONE's hands and not just LL.

Hope that helped add to your understanding.

Simply put, "open source" means that the source code for a program is published openly so anyone and everyone can see it. This allows an unlimited number of people to participate in developing the program. The best known example of the power of open sourcing is Mozilla Firefox, a tremendous success story, and a really great program.

If you're still using Internet Explorer, switch to Firefox now. It's smaller, faster, much more secure, and much more stable. Wouldn't it be nice if those same adjectives could apply to a future version SL?


At first, not at all (except for the ones who panic over it, which is silly, but they'll still do it). Over time, it will mean SL will improve and expand vastly beyond where it could have had it remained entirely closed.


No. The server code is still closed. Everything that actually drives the world is still proprietary, meaning only LL has knowledge of it and access to it.

What is being opened is the client software, also called the viewer, the program that lets you see the world. To go back to the browser analogy, the SL viewer, which until today was a lot like Internet Explorer is now becoming much more like Firefox. Anyone can make contributions to it or create their own version of it now, just like they can with Firefox. That doesn't mean the internet itself is open just because the browser is.

For an example, think (in layman's terms) about how a website works. When you go to Amazon.com, for example, you don't get to see any part of what their servers are actually doing. The site works all its magic behind the scenes. You get to view the site and interact with it through your browser, but you can never see anything that's actually driving it.

The same is true with SL. The system that is the world itself is all behind the scenes on the other side of the internet from you. The means by which you view and interact with the world can now be modified to your liking. That's it.



Won't affect those things at all, except that you'll probably have a better interface, and some more fun tools to play with. The only thing to watch is that there will eventually be people who are making their own versions of the viewer, independent of Linden Lab. Some of these might be great; some will be chock full of keyloggers, trojans, and other assorted works of evil genius. Make sure you always use a Linden Lab approved client, not the "Bob's Porn Shack" version.

The source you get out of the browser is just the data. Open source means that you get to see the source of the program itself, and how to make an SL client (just the client though - you server is still not open source, so you can't set up your own servers). Basically the source should tell you things like how to take the raw data coming in and reconstruct an avatar's look (etc) from it.

By opening up the source, you have many more people looking at and working on the code. Residents can now take it upon themselves to fix bugs or make improvements. Rather than releasing their own modified application, what will happen in most cases is that they will submit their changes back to the Lindens for review and possible inclusion into the next sanctioned update. While this saves the Lindens from having to investigate each issue themselves and write the fix, they will still reconcile changes into the official client.

The same goes for new features. If someone (or a group of residents) develop a skinning extension scheme, it may get rolled into the official version, and then at that point people can safely start downloading extensions that make use the new features.

Third-party clients will be still be released, but it will always be caveat emptor. But alot of work that residents put into development will be rolled into the official client.

Good questions. The example I keep going back to is Firefox. Simply put, when people find exploits and create fixes for them, they submit those fixes to Mozilla. Mozilla then checks it out, and if everything's Kosher, they add the fixes to their next release.

Now the same thing can happen for the SL viewer. Let's say you're a programmer, you're going through the code, and you discover "OMG! People can use this part here to [insert predictions of doom & gloom, Hell on Earth, cats & dogs living together, etc.]! Lemme see what I can do to fix that." Then you tell LL about it, they say thanks, and they put your fix into the next version of the viewer.

Alternatively, you can just publish your fixed version yourself, but people will of course be much less likely to trust you than they will LL, so probably not many would choose to use your version. Over time, it's conceivable that LL might choose to give you some sort of seal of approval or something, and then people will know it's okay to download your stuff straight from you. Unless and until that happens, smart people will always download straight from secondlife.com to make sure they don't get anything bad.



More really good questions. I should preface my answer by repeating that I'm not a programmer, so my understanding of this may be a little off, but what I think is the right answer is that for some time now LL has been working hard to implement standards into the way the viewer communicates with the grid. The problem in the past has been that every update changed the way communications happened, so every part of the system had to be updated all at once in order for it all to work together. Now, with communications standards in place, it's not such a big deal. Changing one thing no longer means you have to change everything.



It's not an either/or thing. People will certainly write extensions for the viewer, just like people write extensions for Firefox now. The core of what makes Firefox works doesn't get changed as often as the extensions do, but it does change. Sometimes those core changes break the extensions, and they have to be rewritten, but usually the architecture is flexible enough that most things continue to work, even when there's a big change. Over time, everything will get better and better in the SL viewer, just as it does in Firefox.